LYNDEN, Washington — A bill just introduced in my own state’s
legislature shows just how maddening the debate about abortion in
the U.S. has become. Legally, America is an abortion-on-demand
country. It has been so since the Supreme Court decreed it in 1973.
Many people do not like this and have worked to change the law, but
the brute fact remains. Yet unfettered abortion is not enough for
some advocates of “choice.”
Within this country’s entirely pro-choice legal context
and at great expense, millions of Americans have funded what are
called crisis pregnancy centers. These are places that pregnant or
might-be pregnant girls can come for pregnancy tests, ultrasounds,
counseling, and support. These centers exist to help both
mother-to-be and child. Crisis pregnancy centers often hook women
up with free housing, prenatal care, and legal services. And they
are reviled for their efforts.
Sometimes that revulsion takes legal form. This week,
aptly named state senator Kevin
Ranker reintroduced the Limited Service Pregnancy Center
Accountability Act in the legislature in Olympia. He did so at the
behest of various pro-choice groups, including NARAL, the ACLU, and
especially Planned Parenthood. For years, pro-choice groups have
attacked crisis pregnancy centers as “fake clinics” that offer
women only “limited options” and don’t offer abortion referrals.
Clearly this must be curbed legally.
NARAL spokeswoman Lauren Simonds said on an interview on
the Bellingham radio station
KGMI that the point of the Act is “making sure that [Crisis
Pregnancy Centers] are transparent.” By transparent, she means a)
stigmatized and b) heavily regulated. Pro-choice groups have been
using the reintroduction of the Act to spread unsourced anonymous
horror stories about crisis pregnancy centers and to preach the
merits of the sort of “unbiased pregnancy information” they would
get at Planned Parenthood clinics.
As Simonds said to KGMI host Dillon Honcoop, “the only
[options women are] getting from limited service pregnancy centers
are: carrying the pregnancy to term and having the child, keeping
it [or] giving it up for adoption. Which is certainly an option
that they would also get if they were referred to a family planning
clinic. But in addition to that they would be told about their
options for abortion.”
Legally, what Simonds said is not the case at all. Planned
Parenthood and other pro-choice groups are under no obligation to
offer alternative counsel to abortion and in fact have some
financial incentive to play up abortion as the only real way out.
And the suggestion that pregnant American girls don’t know about
their rights on this one is just too absurd to take
seriously. This is the nation of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and
Juno and Dan Savage.
It might come as news to NARAL, but we also have this
little thing called The Google. The first item the search engine
returned when I went looking for “crisis pregnancy centers” was a
page from the Feminist Women’s Health Center. It warned me, “Beware
of Antiabortion Crisis Pregnancy Centers.”
And so I close with a warning of my own: Yes, if you are
perhaps pregnant and not sure what to do, be careful about those
folks at crisis pregnancy centers. They will help you figure out if
it actually is the case. They will hold your hand and offer
support: moral, legal, and material. They might help you break the
news to family or find a doctor or hook you up with a free place to
live. And before long you might think: Maybe it wouldn’t be the end
of the world to see this thing through.
